Olde England Meets North Side

London Streets Inspire Plan For Embassy Club

A touch of old London will come to Chicago this year with the Embassy Club, a $65 million luxury development recently announced for the city`s largest available North Side site.

The 7.3-acre site at Southport, Wrightwood and Greenview Avenues, is occupied by Embosograph Display Co., a manufacturer of advertising displays and signs, which will relocate August 1.

Designed by Pappageorge Haymes, architect, in collaboration with Daniel E. McLean, president of MCL Development Corp., Embassy Club will consist of 35 custom single-family homes, 87 Victorian rowhouses and 69 luxury loft condominiums.

The project is a joint venture of MCL Development and VMS Realty. They purchased the property last November with acquisition and construction financing from American National Bank.

McLean said he wanted to create a new planned community for the city that heretofore has been available only in the suburbs-``something like Mission Hills in Northbrook, with private streets and limited access.``

His in-town inspiration was Chalmers Court, the 19th Century townhouses at McCormick Theological Seminary, which incorporate ``the feel of an old London street.``

During a visit to London last year, McLean spent two weeks walking the streets in residential neighborhoods to formulate the concept of his new development.

``I wanted a feeling of tradition and classic residential prestige, a kind of private enclave within the city that would offer a variety of housing styles,`` he said. ``The result is designs that have a solid feeling, reminiscent of an Embassy Row with architecture that is very traditional.``

McLean said Embassy Club will be ``like old Astor Street recreated`` with cobblestone streets and walks, wrought-iron fencing and entry gates, antique cast-iron street lights, brick and stone pillars. The Regency/Georgian-style rowhouses will be dominated by such materials as brick, stone, copper and slate shingle.

The rowhouses and single-family houses will be built in three clusters surrounding three private lanes that form plaza courtyards. Each cluster, patterned after a London neighborhood, will have 30 to 35 units.

Two-thirds of the site is occupied by two connecting Embosograph buildings-a three-story, 100,000-square-foot building constructed in 1928 as the original headquarters for Teletype Corp., and a one-story, 200,000-square- foot building.

The three-story office building will be restored, complete with all new Prairie Style windows and an underground parking garage, for Amherst Lane-69 one- and two-bedroom condominium loft units with one or two baths. The units will range in size from 1,000 to 1,800 square feet and in price from $125,000 to $250,000. Nine penthouse units with terraces will include a three-story unit in the building`s tower. Roy Kruse & Associates are architects for this phase of the project.

Development of the loft building will not begin until after August, when Embosograph vacates the property. The adjoining one-story building-in

``dilapidated`` condition-will be razed.

Meanwhile, construction has begun on the vacant portion of the site for the first 37 of 96 fee simple single-family row houses with party walls. The first houses are scheduled for delivery this fall.

The rowhouses, Wingate Terrace, are designed by architect Pappageorge Haymes and will range in size from 1,800 to 3,300 square feet. The units will have two, three and four bedrooms, 2 1/2 to four baths, family room, dining room, one-car garage and one exterior parking space. They are priced from $250,000 to $400,000.

Knightsbridge Manor will consist of 37 single-family custom homes of 2,800 square feet or more on 30-by-37-foot lots that sell for $150,000.

Buyers can acquire the lot and utilize their own architects, whose plans will be subject to approval, or one of the designs developed by four firms:

Environ, Pappageorge Haymes, Roy Kruse & Associates or Design Bridge. Each architect has created several plans to insure that all Knightsbridge Manor homes will be different. Houses built from these plans, including lot, will range in price from $425,000 to $700,000.

Four prototype homes are shown at Montana Homes, an MCL development in the 900 block of N. Montana Street.

A sales trailer for the entire project now is open at Wrightwood and Greenview Avenues. Completion is expected in three years.

Embassy Club completes the transition of MCL Development from a rehab firm at its founding in 1976 to renovator of historic properties in 1983 and, since 1985, as a dominant builder and developer of townhouses and condominiums in West DePaul, Lincoln Park and Lake View.

In addition to building 200 such units in the past two years, MCL has developed an 18,000-square-foot shopping center at Lakewood and Fullerton. Another 12,000-square-foot retail center will be built this summer at Belmont and Fullerton.

Other current McLean projects include Melrose Commons, 16 townhouses at Melrose Avenue and Halsted Street; Four Seasons Club, townhouses at Villa Olivia Country Club in west suburban Bartlett; Sweeterville, 56 condominium townhouses at Fletcher and Lakewood; and Lakewood Commons, 108 townhouses